WFP Faces $251 Million Funding Gap, Keeps Food Rations at 60%

#EBR_News Oct 26, 2026

The World Food Programme (WFP) says its Ethiopia operation faces a $251 million funding gap for the six months from November 2026 to April 2027, at a time when El Niño-related weather shocks, insecurity and displacement are raising food needs. 

According to the agency’s October 2026 Ethiopia Country Brief, requirements for the period are only 46 percent funded. The brief adds that humanitarian needs are expected to stay elevated into early 2027, while funding shortfalls continue to constrain the response.

The scale of the work is already large. The brief says WFP reached around 2.1 million food-insecure people in September, up from 1.9 million in August, delivering 14,212 metric tonnes of food and $4.5 million in cash assistance. 

Women made up 45 percent of those assisted. Within that total, the agency reported helping 407,000 crisis-affected people in the Somali and Gambella regions, equal to 80 percent of its monthly target there, and 762,335 refugees across 30 camps.

Limited resources are already forcing hard choices. According to the brief, WFP kept cereal distributions at 60 percent of the standard ration, equivalent to 9 kg per person, while preserving full rations of pulses and vegetable oil. 

Refugees who have lived in the country for long periods also receive 60 percent rations because of funding limitations, while newly arrived Sudanese and South Sudanese refugees continue to receive full rations given their greater vulnerability. Ethiopia hosts over 1.13 million refugees and asylum-seekers, the brief notes.

The agricultural outlook adds to the pressure. The report says El Niño-related rainfall deficits have made the Kiremt rains uneven, helping crop development in western areas but hurting production, pasture and water availability in parts of Tigray, Amhara, Afar and eastern Oromia

The Meher harvest is expected to improve food availability in surplus areas, the brief states, but drought-affected households are likely to face reduced harvests, earlier depletion of stocks and continued dependence on markets. Food inflation, which the report lists among the factors heightening food security concerns, makes that dependence more costly.

In the south and southeast, the brief says above-normal October to December rainfall may improve pasture and water, but also raises the risk of flooding, displacement, infrastructure damage and disease outbreaks. 

WFP said it is preparing for El Niño-related flooding in the Somali Region, either through anticipatory action or by expanding its support to the government’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). Supporting an estimated 100,000 people with three rounds of multipurpose cash transfers would cost about $1.3 million, according to the document.

Operations are also being hampered on the ground. The brief reports that hostilities have disrupted supply routes and delayed food assistance in some regions, while insecurity, transport constraints and fuel shortages have interrupted distributions. In Amhara, insecurity disrupted teaching and school feeding in 45 schools. 

WFP is nonetheless preparing to launch distributions for 223,100 people in Afar, Amhara and Tigray once cooperating partners are onboarded, focusing on districts with acute needs linked to El Niño. It also says targeting for the sixth phase of the PSNP remains delayed in all regions because updated poverty data is unavailable.